"Colonisation .... in top gear": New Zealand architecture in the 1870s Date: Friday 7th December 2018 Venue: School of Architecture, Victoria University, Convener: Christine McCarthy ([email protected])

The decade opened with the departure of British imperial troops from our shores, in anticipation of the end of the Land Wars. This coincided with Julius Vogel's bold plans for New Zealand public infrastructure supporting roads, railways and immigration, requiring overseas borrowing of £10 million. Part of Vogel's motivation included the idea that employment for M āori would create peace between Māori and P ākeh ā. The idea of peace - or "defusing anger from the wars" as Smith puts it - had also underpinned the establishment of the M āori parliamentary seats in the previous decade. She also writes that:

Colonial politicians made the male M āori vote conditional on no "treason felony or infamous offence," so that "rebels" in the wars would be denied political citizenship. Donald McLean suggested the idea of four M āori seats as a temporary measure, effectively until M āori were assimilated and tribal land was converted into individual title, whereupon M āori men could exercise the same property vote as settlers.

The Māori seats were extended for another five years in 1872, and made permanent in 1876 "amid fears that a flood of Maori voters on the European rolls would affect the chances Europeans in those seats." 1872 also saw two M āori members of Parliament being appointed to the Legislative Council or upper house, and the establishment of a Native Affairs Committee. This year is also considered to mark the end of the New Zealand Wars, when Te Kooti "took refuge ... in the King Country, becoming the colony's most wanted outlaw." Smith attributes this end date to Te Arawa forces firing "the last shots in the New Zealand wars, against a retreating Te Kooti." Brown identifies two strands of M āori architecture following the land wars: the appropriation of Christian and Western ideas and materials, which she sees in Te Whiti and Tohu's architecture at Parihaka, and Te Kooti's development of the work of East Coast tohunga whakairo, such as Raharuhi Rukupo.

She writes that Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki "led the architectural development of the M āori meeting house, during and after the New Zealand Wars, to support his wider struggle for political justice and spiritual salvation. He had been one of Rukupo's carving apprentices, and may have worked on Te Hau-ki-Turanga." His "guerrilla-style resistance campaign against the colonial government" is associated with the building of Ringatu meeting houses, "over 40 of which were built between 1869 and 1908." An example, Brown gives, is Te Kooti's arrival in the Urewera in 1870, which was acknowledged with the building of Te Whai-a-te-motu at Ruatahuna, opened by Te Kooti in 1891. Neich appears to give qualified agreement to these assertions, both referring to Mead's suggestion that wharenui emerged "during the 1870s and 1880s, as a result of Ringatu inspiration which fused the large church of the missionaries and the indigenous carved house of the Maori into one architectural form." His work is focussed on Ngati Tarawhai and he states of the 1870s that:

This was the period when the wars were coming to a close, a period of intense political and religious activity and realignment. The new large meeting houses were built to accommodate meetings discussing land and land sales, political meetings, tribal committees of all sorts, religious meetings, and to provide sleeping accommodation for the guests who travelled to these meetings. The carved and decorated house simply known as Whare Manuhiri, built at Te Taheke in the 1860s by Ngati Hinerangi as an accommodation house for visitors, including travelling Europeans, was probably an important development in the evolution of the modern meeting house in the Rotorua area. Thus the new meeting house incorporated the functions of the chief's house, the guest house and the church under one roof. Then the role of the meeting house as a venue for religious meetings, replacing the separate church, became prominent in the 1870s and 1880s.

Smith notes, at this stage "[b]attles then transferred to the Native Land Court which after 1873 demanded even more intense individualisation of land interests." This was not straightforward, and government surveying of land in Taranaki in 1878 initiated another land dispute, with local M āori famously responding by ploughing the land in May 1879, after promised reserves for M āori occupation were not created. Brown describes the Parihaka community passively resisting "by removing survey pegs, ploughing settler fields, and rebuilding boundary fences torn down by surveyors." Ploughmen were arrested in June and July 1879 with some sentenced to gaol. The Maori Prisoners' Trial Act 1879 was passed enabling the government to hold protesters without a trial. The Maori Prisoners Act 1880 further enabled the continuing detention of prisoners without a trial. The result was the creation of "the largest M āori conmmnity in Aotearoa New Zealand at that time," when "[a]n influx of Māori sympathetic to the protests came from around the central North Island" to Parihaka.

The extension of the M āori seats were only one of a number of changes to New Zealand's government. The decade began with the introduction of the secret ballot for elections, while its end (1879) saw universal suffrage for P ākeh ā men, M āori men only being able to vote for the M āori seats - unless they held a £25 freehold estate or were a ratepayer. In the same year the parliamentary term shortened from five years to three, but perhaps the biggest change occurred in 1876, was when Provincial government ended with the abolition of the provinces and the creation of local government authorities. The architectural reality of this was that abolition "had landed most of [the provincial government] buildings in the Central Government's lap. Care and maintenance now became the concern of the Works Department."

The new assertion of central government required buildings to accommodate it. Clayton was the first Colonial Architect (1869-1877). Shortly after his appointment, in 1871, he began preparing plans to extend the Wellington Provincial Buildings, in anticipation of the change to central government. Stacpoole writes that Clayton's Legislative Council Chamber "took its cue from the old building and adopted a form of Gothic detailing without showing any depth of feeling for the style," while Hodgson, clearly more enthused about the building, describes the result as "a wild Gothic storm with plenty of decoration and a singular skyline which endeared it to photographers." It burnt down in 1907.

There was equally a need to house public servants. The 1876 9,290 sqm wooden Revival Government Buildings on reclaimed land was designed by William Clayton. The choice of building material is usually credited to earthquake safety while criticised on ground of vulnerability to fire. In contrast to this, Martin states that Clayton: strongly favoured concrete, considering that resistance to fire took priority over resistance to earthquakes. The timber tender was only 75 per cent of that for concrete and the government over-ruled his preference on the grounds both of economy and speed of construction.

Hodgson also notes Clayton's "insistence on using Australian jarrah, which not only meant delays but was also seen as a snub to local timber merchants." Stacpoole and Beaven describe the final building as retaining its dignity, while "the horizontal emphasis suggests a leisureliness and repose which have long since been lost to modern living." Stewart states its design was influenced by Queen Victoria's Osborne House. Stacpoole points out perhaps the greatest influence on Clayton's design when he writes that "[h]ere there were no unfortunate Gothic neighbours and he was able to give full play to his love of neo-Renaissance forms and details." The building initially housed "600 civil servants and was heated by 160 fireplaces," a phenomenon translated by Stacpoole as "a forest of chimneys sprouting from the roof. Their removal was an improvement." Martin notes that Clayton also built government offices "in Tauranga in 1875, in lnvercargill, Gisborne and Wellington in 1876, in Lyttelton in 1877 and in in 1879;" Square's new government buildings (William Clayton and Pierre Burrows, 1876-79) gave the square a building in an "uncommon" and "restrained" Venetian Gothic.

Martin also documents the Customhouse in Russell (1870), Courthouses in Reefton (1872), Naseby (1875), Napier (1875), Rawene (1876), and (1878), an extension to the Coromandel Courthouse, (1873), Post Offices in Havelock, Marlborough (1876), Port Chalmers (1877), and Lyttelton (1877), and the Industrial School Burnham (1873) as among Clayton's work, and claims that over the eight years of his role as Colonial Architect (he died in 1877), he had designed and saw to completion 180 buildings. This level of productivity might be credited to Clayton's development of ""standard plans" for small public buildings, which could better be described as standard approaches to design-timber construction, steep roofs with deeply overhanging gables, standard brackets and standard windows." Martin states that "Clayton's rapidly produced "standard plans" seem wholly original, carry little historical reference, and display no ornament. It was a formidable achievement." The need for such a plan is, in part, explained by the amount of work done by the Colonial Architect, but also by his lack of resources. Stacpoole described the Colonial Architect's office as a "meagre establishment," which he embellishes with the image of "long hours spent at night over a drawing board or preparing endless reports." Martin identifies the Customhouse in Russell and the Post Office in Havelock, Marlborough, as two existing examples of Clayton's standard plan work.

The shift from provincial government also required the Public Works Department to ensure social infrastructure throughout the country. New buildings, including post offices, police stations, gaols, courthouses and hospitals, were built to rehouse or upgrade provincial institutes or to create new ones. The Grecian-influenced Supreme Court (Pierre Finch Martineau Burrows, 1878-80) was one of these. Hodgson states that the building is notable for the comprehensive use of plasterwork rather than stonemasonry, and its deep concrete foundations poured into metal cylinders necessitated by its reclaimed site, though Martin describes the foundations as "hundreds of totara piles [... carrying] an overall concrete slab, four metres below ground level, which, in turn, carries extensive brick footings." Inside the main courtroom is "an awesomely decorated double-height chamber overlooked by a public gallery." In addition, it was "Wellington's first public building constructed in fire-resisting materials." Its construction was "preceded by an elaborate and lengthy Masonic ceremony to lay the foundation stone." Stacpoole provides significant detail regarding this ceremony on 1 December 1879, noting Julius Toxward as the District Grand Master and Brother Burrows as architect. It seems, while not uncommon for New Zealand, the event was novel enough for Wellington, with thousands of spectactors, and "[a] special train brought members of the craft from the Wairarapa."

Vogel's economic efforts would run dry by the end of the decade, and Martin sympathesises with Pierre Finch Martineau Burrows, Clayton successor, because he took over "at a time when the euphoria generated by Vogel's policies had evaporated, overseas loans had become difficult to obtain, and the Department's budget was cut back." Burrows oversaw the construction of the cruciform Mt Eden Prison (1862-1888), using plans obtained from England, seeing "its turrets as "relieving the sombre aspect of the structural mass"." The earlier prison at New Plymouth from Clayton's days was "suitable, simple, and unobtrusive, but it was also, quite obviously, a building of authority."

In , the 1840 Colonial Hospital was replaced by a design resulting from an architectural competition won by Philip Herepath. The three-storey building (1875, dem.1964) used "the latest available techniques for ventilation, supplied chutes for linen and rubbish and grouped the bathrooms in the towers at either end." North of Dunedin Seacliffe Asylum (Robert Lawson, 1878) was built on a 404 hectare farm, its large size presenting "a huge brick building that was visible to passing ships." The land was vulnerable to slips, resulting in "foundation displacement and plaster falls; ceiling timbers groaned and joinery warped," and a Royal Commission of Inquiry criticising the selection of the site and the work of the architect and builder. The design of Seacliffe followed that of the 1860s Avondale asylum (Avondale, James Wrigley, 1867), and Sunnyside Hospital under the Canterbury Province (B.W. Mountfort, 1871-91). Stacpoole and Beaven refer to Sunnyside as demonstrating "the emphasis Victorian architects placed upon their buildings' silhouettes, particularly the outline of roofs against the sky." The building took over two decades to complete, and Stacpoole and Beaven speculate on the part it played on the asylum's keeper's 12 year-old nephew (Samuel Hurst Seager) in later pursuing a career in architecture. Regardless both Seacliffe and Sunnyside had their fans, not the least the Resident Engineer, Middle Island, who "commented that Sunnyside and Seacliff were among the handsomest buildings in New Zealand."

The creation of local body government, following the abolition of the provinces, also produced new architecture. The design of Dunedin's Town Hall (Robert Lawson, 1876) was intended to be determined by competition, but the results were "shelved," and the commission given to Lawson instead. Hodgson notes the building's French influence "in the use of mansard at the corners," within its dominant Italian "main entrance ... sited above street level and the tall observation tower with its sectional composition and wealth of detailing." It opened in 1880.

The 1870s was the decade of big spending. Vogel's infrastructure plans were key to this. In 1871 he commenced railway construction under the public works programme, and in 1879 the Christchurch to Invercargill railway line was completed. Vogel also established a steamer service between New Zealand and San Francisco and lobbied to increase trade with the U.S., achieving an increase in the value of exports from £37,000 to £337,915 between 1870 and 1872. In 1871 the first woollen mill was established at Mosgiel, as was the first dairy co-operative, also in Otago, while a paper mill was built in Mataura in Southland in 1875. The first New Zealand shipping line (New Zealand Freight Company) was established the following year. In 1873 provincial companies created the New Zealand Shipping Company, and in 1875 the Dunedin Union Steam Ship Company was formed. A year later, the first trans-Tasman cable was laid, from Cable Bay, north of Nelson, and before the end of the decade, in 1878 the first telephone call, between Dunedin and Milton was made by electrician Charles Henry, who "asks numerous questions and receives instantaneous responses." Stewart summarises these achievements of the decade as:

1800 kilometres of railways, 6400 kilometres of telegraph lines and many roads, public buildings and bridges were constructed. Although this undoubtedly gave New Zealand the catalyst for development it needed, borrowing on this level was high flying for a country with fewer than 250,000 settlers.

She describes Vogel's economic strategy in familiar language now used to criticise the economic boost of the Canterbury rebuild and recent record immigration: "During the 1870s much of Vogel's investment money had been heavily directed toward buildings and other domestic projects like housing, encouraged by increased immigration, rather than toward more export-oriented developments."

Salmond points to the 1870s economic climate as also impacting on the shape of businesses, writing that: "[d]uring the 1870s heavy public investment in joint stock companies and the amalgamation of smaller timber businesses led to large mills working in near boom conditions in Auckland, and the city soon became the timber capital of New Zealand." He refers to new industrial technologies introduced to New Zealand in 1870s, such as Hoffman kilns for brick-making, and the popularity of "flash" glass, which could make "delicate patterns of rosettes, stars, or repeating motifs," in houses. Flash glass was "produced by dipping hot clear glass into molten coloured glass, and then blowing this into a cylinder in the normal way to make sheet glass with a thin layer of colour bonded to it." Salmond also notes the diversity of glass products available by the late 1870s, referring to Stewart and Co. in Wellington offering "stocks of "Plate, Rolled Plate, Ground, Ornamental, and colored [sic]" glass" in 1879, and that, from about 1870, cylinder glass was used for ordinary house windows. Similar developments occurred in the range of iron sheet being manufactured in Dunedin by R & T Haworth by the mid-1870s, including iron sheets with ridging and spouting of iron or pure zinc, and while American Finishing Nails, French Wire Nails, and Ewbank's and Cut Nails were still being imported in 1873, Salmond speculates that "it is probable that nails were being manufactured in local foundries by this time." Selling techniques similarly increased in their sophistication with Findlay and Co. of Dunedin producing catalogues of "plans and elevations for eight simple cottages, as well as windows, mouldings, fences, panelling and turned items" by 1875.

Smith writes of Vogel's assisted immigration policies that "[a]bout half of the assisted migrants of the 1870s were English; a fifth came from the west of England, including Cornwall. About a quarter were Scots. The colony also looked to Germany and Scandinavia for workers to develop North Island bush settlements." 1874 was a stand out year with 38,106 new migrants coming to New Zealand. Hodgson refers to the doubling of the P ākeh ā settler population "from about a quarter to half a million." This influx required temporary accommodation, and immigration barracks were built at Auckland, Lyttelton, Napier, Dunedin, Wellington and even Stewart Island, with quarantine stations at Port Chalmers, Somes Island and Auckland. Vogel's immigration policies resulted in a buoyant building trade that, according to Stacpoole and Beaven, shifted emphasis from "the rather grand public buildings of the 1860s to the more mundane need for housing and commercial premises." This included the emergence of a professional class whose houses were architect-designed "gentlemen's residences, as opposed to mere villas, houses, dwellings or cottages," which Stacpoole and Beaven summarise as "large and ostentatious houses as symbols of their success in the world," also observing that:

Many of them became an embarrassment before they were ten years old. It is a curious fact that they were often designed by men who had entered the profession after working initially as builders. Perhaps they contributed to the submergence of the more scholarly forms of architecture, but the trend was world-wide as the Victorian love of display asserted itself and newly-rich merchants and businessmen prepared to take their places in society.

Nathaniel Edward's House Sunnyside, Nelson, which included a "large private ballroom, turrets, intricate decoration and conservatory," is one such house. Hodgson describes its "splendid concoction and the tight grouping of decorative devices - towers, gables, oriel windows and bays," as lending "an air of both frivolity and wealth," and "revealing quite vividly the architectural gulf between labourer and successful merchant." John Logan Campbell's Kilbryde (Edward Mahoney and Son), and James Williamson's Italianate The Pah (Auckland, 1877-78) - designed by Thomas Mahoney after returning from Europe and the United States - are others. Hodgson, in reference to The Pah (which was built on land formerly Whataroa Pa), points to the fashion for the Italianate, following Queen Victoria's Osborne House (Isle of Wight, 1845-51). Shaw identifies Williamson's wealth as deriving from Waikato land holdings as a result of land confiscations in the 1860s. A "foundation stone laying ceremony" was held to mark its beginnings, and Hodgson notes that "contemporary newspaper reports seem almost breathless in their awe." The house's impressive Ionic columned porte cochere, and sweeping carriageway, were no doubt in part to blame for the gushing press. Shaw also notes the Italianate fashion spawning from Osborne House - but links this to William Fox's Westoe (nr Marton, Charles Tringham, 1874). He describes Westoe's interior furnishings as having no expense spared: "inlaid floors, Italian marble fireplaces and decorative plasterwork distinguish the principal rooms." Other Italianate residences could be seen in the "substantial ... town houses" along Wellington's Terrace, which, according to Stewart, ultimately reflected: the houses of the rising middle class in New Zealand as they emulated the detailing and architectural features of houses owned by those above them on the social scale. Many of these architectural elements were ultimately to contribute to the richness and variety of the New Zealand villa.

More modest cottages for gentlemen, include the 165 sqm Carpenter Gothic "Plimmer House" (1870), which was built for Henry Eustace de Bathe Brandon - chief clerk and accountant in the Stamp Department, by Scoular and Archibald, builders of Wellington's Government Buildings. Additions to houses, as well as new buildings, demonstrated an heightened architectural flourish, with Stacpoole and Beaven citing William Williams' castellated additions to Clifton House (1871) as a concrete instance. However, Williams' castellated addition was no match for its contemporary Larnach Castle (Otago Peninsula, R.A. Lawson, 1871), though style-experts apparently have kittens over its mismatching Scottish baronial crenellations clashing with colonial, cast-iron and glass verandahs. Another Lawson-designed Dunedin residence was Wychwood (Anderson Bay, late 1870s), built for C.R. Howden and called "Pomphrey Court." The exterior rubble and houses an interior of "finest kauri, Oregon pine and mahogany." Another well-known addition is the 1870 verandahs which elaborately wrap around the 1862 Alberton in Mt Albert on three sides. Architect Matthew Henderson also added agee-topped turrets, credited by John Stacpoole to his client Allan Kerr Taylor's birthplace in Seringapatam, India.

The 1860s and 1870s were: decades of great expansion and growth ... Major New Zealand towns doubled in size and there was an explosive growth in building: railway stations, banks, post offices, schools, law courts, grand hotels and public building of all kinds. By the early 1870s the character of European New Zealand was fairly well established. ... and most New Zealand towns had established a basic pattern that was to continue well into [the twentieth-] century."

Hodgson points to the other side of mass immigration, emphasising the "poverty, unemployment, impossibly high rents, child labour and sweating," resulting in "dense subdivision and rapid construction of houses in inner city suburbs," in a context where "[n]o sewerage systems existed in any of the main cities before the turn of the century." The socio-economic topographical divide meant "the wealthy lived on the ridges while the working and lower classes built dwellings on the slopes and in the valleys." Lack of cheap public transport also led to high concentrations of poorer people living close to workplaces creating inner-city slums.

Salmond likewise refers to congested town centres and writes that "the earliest houses had to compete with two- and even three-storeyed wooden commercial buildings which ran right up to their side boundaries," with the need for corrugated iron sides as "both an economy and a protection against fire," while timber front facades bulged "with semi-classical ornamentation." Newly expanding cities, and a majority of the housing stock being cottages, set the scene for the emergence of the bay villa to appear. As Stewart writes: "[m]any typical suburban houses of this time projected one room forward under a flat-fronted gable at the front of the house. Some had a faceted bay window under its own roof further projecting from this. A verandah ran across the rest of the facade." Other construction details and technologies were new to houses in the 1870s. Salmond notes the replacement of butted boards forming corners with the boxed corner sitting over weatherboards, "their edges masked with scribers, " and the "rebated saddle" in the 1870s. He also refers to flush eaves giving way to boxed eaves, "where the rafters sat on ceiling joists which extended beyond the wall frame," and the unusual instance of Gordon Coates family house: Ruatuna (Matakohe, 1877) being built of board and batten walls, a construction technique normally considered appropriate "for outhouses, or very cheap houses in newer areas."

Anthony Trollope in his 1870s visit to New Zealand, ""grudged the grandeur of the banks, being reminded by every fine facade of percentage, commission and charges for exchange"." This grandeur could be seen in Robert Lawson's Australia and New Zealand Bank (Dunedin, 1874) which was a "scholarly classical design," along with the competing Italian Renaissance styled Bank of New Zealand (William Armson, 1879). Wellington's four-storey Nathan warehouse (Christian Toxward, 1873) though in timber, was likewise an essay in classically-inspired decorative finery, including "decorative orbs and spikes along the parapet," while William Armson drew on Venetian Gothic for a number of his commercial designs, including a now demolished building in Hereford street (1877). Toxward's Nathan warehouse had installed "one of the first 'sprinkler' systems in the country, a series of perforated water pipes in the ceilings installed during construction," though this appears to have been limited use, given the building was destroyed by fire around the turn of the century.

Churches were another source of work for architects, with Hodgson writing that:

[r]eligious buildings of permanence and visual authority were also sought and this period saw a substantial amount of church construction, not only to replace earlier buildings which had outlived their purposes and seating capacity, but also for newly formed dioceses to serve the needs of an increasing population.

1870s churches built included the French Gothic St Joseph's cathedral (Dunedin, Francis Petre, 1878- 1886), the English Renaissance-influenced St Paul's Christchurch (Samuel Farr, 1876), the Gothic Revival First Church, Dunedin (Robert A. Lawson, 1873), with its 175 foot high tower, and B.W. Mountfort's supervision of the Gilbert Scott designed Christchurch Cathedral (1873-1904). The austere Dominican convent in Dunedin (Frank Petre, 1877) is another religious building of importance built in the decade, and was the first major building built of poured concrete in the country. Brown also refers to "k āika" as a southern village model "centred on a church and/or ," in reference to Otakoa Marae, and its wharenui Te Mahi Tamariki, built in 1874.

The 1870s was also an important decade for women. Smith has noted that the prior colonial demographic bulge of men eased from the 1870s. In 1871 the opened all of its classes to women, leading English and Australasian universities, the same year that Otago Girls' High School was established in Dunedin. Consequently, the first woman graduated from a New Zealand university (Kate Edger) with a BA from Auckland University College in 1877, the same year that Christchurch Girls' High School was founded. The decade also saw legal support for female employment in factories with the Employment of Females Act 1873, the same year that Canterbury University was established - the fourth Australasian University, after Sydney, Melbourne and Otago - where "women were admitted from the start on an equal basis with men because John Macmillan Brown, one of the foundation professors, insisted that "true democracy" required that the "best women as well as the best men" take their rightful place in arts and government." One of Macmillian Brown's students, Helen Connon, would become both "the first woman in the to graduate with honours when she received an MA with first-class honours in Latin and English at Canterbury College in 1881," and his wife. While the University of Otago had been founded the previous decade in 1869, the 1870s saw it move from what would become the stock exchange building to its current site astride the Leith in a Scottish baronial-inspired ("but vaguely eastern in execution") building. The Max Bury design won a 1877 design competition to gain the commission. Its "stone construction, limestone detailing, pointed arches, oriel window and soaring tower" are reminiscence of British university buildings, with Shaw pointing out a particular connection to George Scott's Glasgow University (1870), and Otago's asymmetrical exterior expressing the building's interior.

Lincoln's Ivey hall (Frederick Strouts, 1878) was also built at this time, but unlike Otago, it drew on the "symmetry, the large square windows, the ornate porches and the delicious curvilinear gable heads" of a Jacobean country house. Shaw associates this selected style with Strouts' 1868 trip to England where he "became aware of a number of neo-Elizabethan country houses being built using the architectural vocabulary of Flemish craftsmen: the distinctive curved and stepped gables, bay windows, strapwork and cresting of buildings erected during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I." Shaw stresses the variety in Strouts' design: "[t]he gables are Dutch, the windows of the English mullioned variety, the bell tower and porte cochere French Renaissance." The clocktower and entrance to Canterbury College (Mountfort, 1877-79), in contrast, was designed in a free Gothic style. Mountfort's Canterbury Museum (1876) stood opposite it with its tall pavilion roof and , while inside, according to Stacpoole and Beaven, "architectural excitements have been obscured by unMountfortian ceilings and partitions."

Wider reform in education also included the establishment of free education for seven to 13 year olds, with the Education Act 1877. This resulted in 730 public primary schools being established by regional education boards, and the attendance of M āori children at state-schools. Hodgson describes the resulting building programme as ranging from "small one-roomed country schoolhouses to pretentiously designed city schools with rolls of many hundreds." Prior to this though, historically- important school buildings had been built. The two-storey bluestone Christchurch Normal School on Cranmer Square (Samuel Farr, 1873) was the result of a design competition producing "a building of formidable appearance and intriguing planning," its corner-site "vigorously decorated octagonal room," being "a foil to the monotony of long wings." It was extended two years later to provide accommodation for a kindergarten and trainee teachers. William Armson's Christchurch Boys' High School (1870), built in the same precinct as Mountfort's Canterbury College, supported the dominance of Gothic Revival as "the most suitable style for educational buildings."

Smith notes that "[t]he real winners from free, state primary schooling were working-class girls whose lives changed more than boys' experiences did as girls increasingly attended school and later found employment before marriage." This was also a shift from the government-run native primary schools system that required M āori who wanted to establish schools to contribute significantly financially, providing land, and contribute to the cost of school buildings and teachers' wages, though native schools were still built in the 1870s, with Stacpoole referring to "two schoolmasters' houses for native schools," being designed by William Clayton. Māori had also provided land for secondary level church-run M āori boarding schools, such as St Stephen's School (1844), Wesley College (1844), Te Aute College (1854), Waerenga-a-Hika College (1856), St Joseph's Maori Girls' School (1867), and Hukarere M āori Girls' School (1875). Most of these were Anglican schools but not all land was used for schools. One instance relating to Porirua land gifted to the Anglican church resulted in the Wi Parata v Bishop of Wellington decision of 1877 in which Chief Justice Prendergast famously announced that the was "a "simple nullity"" and would not recognise any native title.

It is these combined aspects of the 1870s which caused Hodgson to describe these years as "colonisation under way in top gear." He noted that the economic fervour caused by immigration, public works, a central government and an industrial and commercial base to the economy meant that "major cities were able to support up to eight or 10 different [architectural] practices," and that "there appeared a certain specialisation within the architectural fraternity; some architects would have been more likely than others to design, say, churches, banks, warehouses or private homes." It is perhaps no accident then that the idea of the architect appears to have consolidated in New Zealand here, with the foundation of the first architectural association resulting from Ben Mountfort, Fred Strouts, Bill Armson and Alex Lean establishing the Canterbury Association of Architects in 1871.

By the end of the decade however things were not so rosy. Stewart is direct in her appraisal of the situation:

In 1879 the bubble burst. Without warning, the banks, hard-pressed for money as overseas funds dried up, cut credit facilities and with this probably long-overdue action, the boom collapsed and New Zealand entered the "long depression." Warning signs of its impending advent had been apparent during the affluent years but they had been largely ignored. Exports had been falling rather than increasing. In 1872 wool prices began to fall and fell sharply in 1874, and in 1873 wheat prices began a downhill slide. Trollope had noticed the signs early in the 1870s. Discussing Vogel and his policies, he had remarked that "what at first was taken for dash and good courage, seemed to many after a while to become recklessness and foolhardiness."

Papers (15-20 min) presenting new research that examines any aspect of this period of New Zealand architectural history are called for from academics, practitioners, heritage consultants, and postgraduate students. Papers are required to be formatted in accordance with the style guide provided to authors to enable publication. The symposium is one of a series of annual meetings examining specific periods of New Zealand architectural history. It is intended that papers comprising the proceedings will be made available through the Victoria University institutional repository within a year of the conference.

Symposium fee : The cost of the symposium (including proceedings) will be $60, to be collected on the day of the symposium. Additional copies of proceedings will be available on the day for a cost of $20.

Timetable: Abstracts due: 5pm Monday 17th September 2018 Programme announced: Monday 17th September 2018 Full Papers due: Monday 12th November 2018 Registration due: Friday 30th November 2018 Conference: Friday 7th December 2018

References Brown, Deidre Maori Architecture: from fale to wharenui and beyond (North Shore, NZ: Penguin Group, 2009) Calman, Ross "M āori church boarding schools" Te Ara: the Encyclopedia of New Zealand (20 June 2012) https://teara.govt.nz/en/maori-education-matauranga/page-4 "Capital's historic Plimmer House for auction" (3 November 2015) https://www.nzherald.co.nz/property/news/article.cfm?c_id=8&objectid=11539434 Hodgson, Terence Looking at the Architecture of New Zealand (Wellington: Grantham House, 1990) Jackson, Keith and Alan McRobie Historical Dictionary of New Zealand (Auckland: Longman, 1996) McGuinness, Wendy and Miriam White Nation Dates (Wellington: McGuinness Institute, 2012) Martin, Lewis Built for Us: The Work of Government and Colonial Architects 1860s to 1960s (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2004) Ministry for Culture and Heritage "Parihaka ploughing campaign begins: 26 May 1879" New Zealand History (21 December 2016) https://nzhistory.govt.nz/parihaka-ploughing-campaign-begins Neich, Roger Carved Histories: Rotorua Ngati Tarawhai Woodcarving (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2001) "Parihaka" Te Kotahitango o Te Atiawa Taranaki https://teatiawa.iwi.nz/history/parihaka/ Salmond, Jeremy Old New Zealand Houses 1800-1940 (Auckland: Reed Methuen, 1987; first published 1986) Shaw, Peter New Zealand Architecture: from Polynesian beginnings to 1990 (Auckland, N.Z.: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991) Smith, Philippa Mein A Concise History of New Zealand (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2005) Stacpoole, John Colonial Architecture in New Zealand (Wellington: A.H. & A.W. Reed, 1976) Stacpoole, John and Peter Beaven New Zealand Art: architecture 1820-1970 (Wellington: A.H. & A.W. Reed, 1972) Stewart, Di The New Zealand Villa: Past and Present Auckland: Viking Pacific, 1992.